Some points about this inscription less well known publicly, from a passage in N.P. Lemche’s Back to Reason…..
All bolded highlighting is my own.
The inscription was linguistically without serious problems, a phenomenon Cryer noted as exceptional since no other inscription of the time and of a similar size and complexity has ever presented itself in a similarly unproblematic way; somehow they all have at least one phenomenon which has to be discussed among specialists for years. The Tel Dan inscription knows of no such problems; it is totally translatable.
The reception in those days [from 1993-94, when it was discovered] was almost universally positive, if not simply overwhelmingly positive. The only exception was the Italian specialist in Northwest Semitic languages Giovanni Garbini (1931-2017), who simply rejected the inscription as a rude falsification. Apart from a few linguistic arguments, Garbini based his rejection of the inscription on its similarity in content to, especially, the Mesha stele; it is as if you lifted the text of Tel Dan Fragment A and placed it over a similarly sized section of the Mesha inscription, an astonishing amount of identical phrases and issues appear.
The main battle over the inscription’s authenticity was, however, not fought over linguistic details; it was quite different and had to do with physical peculiarities. It is often maintained that the minimalists had to reject this inscription as genuine simply because it represented a blow to their very minimalism which rejected the historicity of King David. Those waving such opinions are unaware of two things: First of all, the Tel Dan inscription is not a proof of the existence of King David, only at best of a house of David. This is hardly a distressing surprise to the minimalists, because it is exactly what is to be expected, because there is no dearth in the Old Testament as far as references to this “house of David” go. The title “the House of David” makes David as historical as “the House of Windsor” makes Windsor a historical person, as it has been put. The second thing is that the minimalists – or not all of them – did not consider the inscription a fake from the very day of its publication. . . .
The change in attitude came late, in 1995, when Frederick Cryer returned to Copenhagen from a visit to Jerusalem where he had been at the Israel Museum with Russell Gmirkin. Gmirkin had taken a couple of perhaps not quite legal photos of the inscription. Cryer brought them back to Copenhagen for a seminar and just handed them over to me with the question: Can you see it? And it was easy to see: in the almost non-existent first line the vertical line in the “m” did, at the edge of the inscription fragment, suddenly turn to the right (it was supposed to continue in an angle to the left) – down the broken side. This means that if this is really so, the text on the slab has been engraved on it after the slab had been “produced”, which again means that it must logically be a fake inscription and not an ancient one. . . . George Athas discusses Gmirkin’s evidence but dismisses it as “scratches”, which they of course definitely are (Athas 2003, 35-9): Nobody ever said that the slippage was intentional. Finally – and it is really an ironic coincidence (?) – the problems are very clearly exposed in an unusually clear photo of the inscription by Zev Radogan printed on the cover of a book by Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E. Kelle, Biblical History and Israel’s Past (Moore and Kelle 2011).
Such problems are never discussed. It is obvious that the inscription has been accepted in modern Israel as a kind of magna carta for the relations between the modern state and ancient Israel, a holy text, even more holy than the Hebrew Bible and as such beyond discussion – including any discussion about the meaning of the “house of David” part of the inscription. (Lemche, 106-108)
What of the actual words translated “house of David” [bytdwd]?
It is noted that the writing: bytdwd is unusual. Otherwise, words in this inscription are separated with a marker, a dot. Accordingly, we should expect bytdwd written as byt . dwd, in two words. No such marker is found here. If it is an ancient inscription we have no way of knowing the reason for this omission; perhaps a slip from the side of the engraver, but then we should ask: Why exactly here? Was it intended to catch the eye of the reader? It is simply too much of a coincidence? In the early part of the discussion this led to a series of alternative proposals to understand the meaning of the bytdwd, including proposals that it was the name of some locality in the vicinity of Dan, a sanctuary or the like. As the interpretation of the inscription assumed canonical importance, such divergent opinions were simply dismissed without further discussion. The peculiar writing bytdwd received, after Cryers intervention, no more attention, although it is exceptional to find the word bayit “house, temple, family, dynasty” written in early Aramaic as byt. Normally the -y- is left out. We should have expected in normal writing bt . dwd or maybe simply bt . dd, and the discussion should have started from this point. (Lemche, 108)
Just one more thing….
In a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Sydney, which was recently published by Sheffield Academic Press, the Australian scholar George Athas presents a new, innovative and well-argued theory about the Tel Dan Fragments (Athas 2003). According to Athas, fragments A and B1/B2 belong to one and the same inscription, though the extant portions were some distance apart in the unbroken original. Performing a hands-on experiment in which he reconstructed the conditions under which the inscription would have been created—Athas proposes that an ancient scribe would have chalked his words on the stone surface before a skilled mason carved them—Athas was able to demonstrate that the variations in line orientation are quite in keeping with an inscription made on a large piece of stone:
If Athas is correct—and in my view his approach is quite brilliant—all earlier reconstructions of this text and its interpretation are rendered obsolete, since most of them are based on theories involving the non-existent joins. (53f)One more issue has to be addressed before we can leave this inscription behind: the combination of the two (three) fragments into one text. It is no more seen as problematic, but it was when the combination was first made. The fragments (A and B1-2) do no[t] align. This is obvious if we try to do so as I did in my Amman-lecture (Lemche 2003c, 53 — see side box). But do we have a join where they meet? The authorities of the Israel Museum definitely think so. I only have the opinion of a leading Israeli archaeologist of my own generation who was able to inspect the fragments before they were joined, and his response was: There are no joins. George Athas made an ingenious reconstruction of the inscription based on the angle of the chisel used to cut out the inscription on the slab, and it turned out that the angle is different on fragment A and fragments B1-2 (Athas 2003, 191). Comparing the angles of the letters of the inscription he placed fragment B1-2 further down than fragment A, bursting, in this way, the usual interpretation of the inscription as a victory stele of Hazael of Damascus. Of course in the light of the ongoing canonization of the inscription his challenge was never taken up and the usual but most likely impossible interpretation remains in force.93
93 A question not taken up here is the one of the circumstances of the finding of the fragments. There was some confusion about the exact place where it was found, but definitely not as part of a wall of fortification. Fragment A was extracted from below a wall somehow sticking out in the open where it was discovered by the Israeli archaeologist Gila Cook. Ihe first photos of the inscription in Israel Exploration Journal 43 (p. 82) did not show it in situ but moved from its original placed out to the plaza in front of it and standing up. The confusion became total when The Biblical Archaeology Review (March/April 1994, p. 38) published a photo of the inscription in situ (sic!) but inverted. The conditions surrounding the discovery of the two other fragments are not much different. As to the joining of the fragments, Hagelia presents an overview of the interpretations of the stele (until c. 2005) (Hagelia 2006, 13-50). A recent view separating fragments A and B can be found in Knauf and Guillaume 2016, 94, repeated in Knauf and Niemann 2021, 208, where Knauf admits to be the originator of this separation in his “histories”.
(Lemche, 108f)
For other related posts see https://vridar.org/tag/tel-dan-inscription/
Lemche, Niels Peter. Back to Reason: Minimalism in Biblical Studies. Sheffield, South Yorkshire ; Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2022.
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Israel Finkelstein originally thought the Tel Dan was authentic but after the things mentioned above he changed his mind. I can’t find the link but I read this some time back.
I meant to say Israel Finkelstein no longer thinks the Tel Dan inscription mentions the House of David.
I only partly quoted the section making the point you are addressing. Here it is in full:
Israel Finkelstein in his 2024 book, Jerusalem the Center of the Universe: Its Archaeology and History (1800–100 BCE), refers to the Tel Dan inscription a number of times as if it is valid witness to ninth century Judah.
— Ah — I saw your correction just after I posted the above. Agreed.
You would think that the question of whether it is a forgery would be the most important question to answer before scholars invest serious effort in drawing conclusions on what it means.
I would think some sort of physical analysis should be attempted. I am not sure if luminescence analysis would help – it post-dates my geology years, so I am not sure what the limitations would be.
Even so, do we know the source of the stone? do we at least know for sure if the stone was cut in ancient times?
Seems like there are plenty of scientific avenues of inquiry that could be useful.
Ideology and mythmaking trump critical historical inquiry. I understand DNA testing is forbidden in Israel, IDF testimonies of their own massacres of civilians on Oct 7 are censored in Israel, photos of the Tel Dan stele are forbidden . . . walls are built around data that has the potential to expose realities that conflict with national myths.
Mossad did it 🙂
In Israel DNA testing for medical purposes is legal, common, encouraged, and covered by the health basket (state funded healthcare provided by various healthcare providers). DNA testing to identify a person and their family relationship requires a court order. Direct to Consumer DNA testing is illegal. (But people can have someone send them a kit from abroad.) I have no idea about testing in archaeological samples.
Ok, a quick search shows several instances of papers relying on ancient DNA testing in Israel in recent years, so it looks like it can be done, though I don’t know what kind of legal hurdles need to be overcome.
No doubt. I “misspoke/overstated” the DNA thing.
I heard a wonderful joke back in 1996 digging at Yizreel: At Tel Akko, they had found human bones. The Rabbinate in Jerusalem heard about it and sent a representative to close down the excavation. The Rabbi arrived and said: I have heard that you have found human bones! The archaeologist: Yes, but you will not be interested! The Rabbi: Why? The archaeologist: They are 30.000 years old! The Rabbi: So they are from before creation. You are right, I am not interested, and left.
So what is the implication of the lack of joins? Are the B fragments not from the same inscription as the A fragments, or there was additional material between them?
The usual configuration:
The layout according to the view of Athas:
By the way, George Athas argued that the translation of ביתדוד as “House of David” is impossible and concluded it was a toponym:
and
yet….
Athas, George. The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Introduction. London: Sheffield Academic Pres, 2003.
So a city gets a name suggesting it belonged to some ‘dwd’ person (whether the original ‘dwd’ was a person, a deity, or some descriptor), and centuries later when Judah becomes a kingdom the local king decides ‘dwd’ was an ancestor of his, making his lineage go back earlier than the Omride kings of the fallen kingdom of Israel.
Otherwise, as I think you are implying: The Davidic dynasty that began ruling a united Israel and then the Kingdom of Judah is a biblical construct, arguably originating in the Hellenistic period. I don’t recall that we have any evidence that kings of the kingdom of Judah from the time of an ascendant Jerusalem through to Jerusalem’s fall to Babylon ever thought of themselves as “of the House of David”.
So I’m trying to see where that mem in the first line supposedly curves rightward, because it very clearly to my eye angles to the left, contra Lemche. I guess the only thing that might be indicative is that there (appears) to be a line which continues off of it, but this might be anything and someone would seriously have to put this under a microscope to see if that edge was caused by a tool or not. It is not unheard of for damage to follow lines of carving.
As for word dividers, those were inconsistently used at best. For instance the “Beqa of Jerusalem” Ostracon (which Martin Heide has discussed) contains no such word dividers. Of course the authenticity of this has been called into question too, but I should note even epigraphs of undisputed authenticity often reflect this, for instance Pithos B Third inscription of Kuntillet Ajrud doesn’t evenly divide between words in the final segments. It was, in fact, not uncommon to miss a word here and there and divide it. Of course, it could be a toponym, but this is again speculation.
I don’t really have a dog in the fight, nor do I much actually care, but I think it is just worth noting that while I agree with Lemche scholars need to take these issues more seriously and engage them, the conclusion that the Tel Dan Stele is a forgery is also unwarranted based on such limited data and argumentation presented here. I would personally prefer something far more concrete before declaring something a forgery than what may or may not be either an errant inscriber on a pre-damaged portion of stone (forger), or just routine damage from millennia of neglect. The naked eye cannot make such strenuous judgements and we definitely need more concrete scientific analysis; again, validating Lemche’s point that we need to test its authenticity much more, and not take it for granted.
One of the key issues, basically, on the word-divider issue is what counts as a “word” to begin with? Just as “Beth-David” could be taken as one word, so could “House of David” referring to a single entity, that is, a royal entity. It might have been in the mind of this writer, seen as a single name of a royal dynasty. Thus, this could be one of four things: (1) forger forgot to divide words; (2) original writer forgot to divide words; (3) writer never intended to divide words and thought this was all one name for a royal dynasty; (4) same thing but a toponym instead.
And the variety of those options I think negates much of the strength of Lemche’s argument there. Again, this is just me reading randomly around though. I’ll be honest I haven’t read Lemche’s full work there, so I am just going off this blog post excerpt. Personally, I find myself generally in the Israel Finkelstein camp more often than the Copenhagen Minimalist camp.
I tend to see Finkelstein as the archaeologist and Lemche as the historian. Finkelstein hewed well to putting the archaeological data first and foremost until he came to the historical interpretation of the late Iron Age. That’s when, from what I could see, he himself skipped over to reading the data through the Bible, specifically through the Josiah narrative. P. R. Davies made a similar jump…. after arguing, as Finkelstein came to do, for the importance of grounding historical reconstruction first and foremost in archaeology, he also jumped tracks at the end and interpreted the data through the biblical narrative that contextualized it all in the Persian era. Lemche has come across to me as the one who has maintained consistency with a valid method.
As for why the focus on the Persian period in the biblical narratives, I am currently looking into the Hellenistic era’s fascination with Persian times and culture. When I finish my other assignments I hope to post about that perspective. Meanwhile, my formal assignment is testing the plausibility of Persian period Jerusalem being the matrix of much of the biblical literature.
I agree, and for what its worth, I tend to be favorable toward late datings for the biblical narratives and particularly toward the late Babylonian and Persian periods myself (esp. books like Job).
I just think that, in this instance, this is where Lemche himself has not lived with the “unknown” or “questionable” but is jumping the horse from too little, imo. But this likewise is vice versa. But again, I’m with you.
The unknown is something bible scholars need to become much more familiar with, and okay with, and is, in essence, part of my (hopefully last) project on the historical Jesus, and also a part of my focus on my work on early Christian martyrdom/persecution.
“from too little” — if I may, please excuse a little digression of mine in response:
Back in my “cult years” — including the years leading to that period of my life — there were a number of times I felt that there was something, just a little thing, that did not quite fit for some reason. But each time I attempted to mentally address it I decided it was just a little thing, of no major importance, a small side-issue that could be whisked away with a little clarification from both sides . . . it certainly did not come anywhere near overthrowing the main point.
Then after I came through all of that experience, I looked back and saw how it was those many miniscule slivers of detail that were in fact the tell tale symptoms of a deeper and very serious problem. I resolved then that in whatever group, idea, movement, pursuit I was involved with in future I would not let such slight quibbles pass me by without further serious inspection. I can’t say I have kept my resolution perfectly ever since, but I do know that I have a generally active antena for being alert to easily bypassed nano-points. It has pulled me back from getting involved too deep on a few occasions. People sometimes counter by trying to assure me that I am over-reacting and unrealistic — but those were the very same responses I had that led me to set aside the “littlest things” and that led to such disastrous consequences for my life. And generally time has revealed that I was right to step back and take note of what was “too little” to bother with.
But we each have our own journey. Forgive my digression.
Well, we have all been brainwashed by the dceiteronomists! as John Strange coined it back in 1967 when I joined his class on Kings.
John came from an extremely wealthy family belonging to the Pentecostal mission. So he knew what we were talking about.
Few people know him today. Her left us in 2024 more than 90 years old. He was a lifelong friend, but his background prevented him from joining Tom and me. He was brainwashed by the deuteronomists, and knew it and could not escape it.
His most remarkable article was published in the Eduard Nielsen Festschrift (SVT) 1993: The Book of Joshua as Hasmonean propaganda”. He was absolutely right, but now more than 30 years later, we are only getting to this conclusion … slowly … step by step.
Strange, John. “The Book of Joshua – A Hasmonaean Manifesto?” In History and Traditions of Early Israel: Studies Presented to Eduard Nielsen, May 8th 1993, edited by André Lemaire and Benedikt Otzen. Brill, 1993. Unfortunately this is not readily available through normal channels online, but here are some key quotes:
I prefer the approach that avoids any dogmatic conclusion and prefers to live with “an unknown” or “questionable” …. to build any argument on such a source is unwise. The default scholarly position should lean towards scepticism.
Lemche’s phrasing could have been better. The mem itself on the top line does indeed go to the left running along the broken edge at the top of the slab, hence you can tell that it is definitely intended to be a mem. The issue is that the person faking the inscription was doing an upward cut from the elongated lower right line of the mem and accidentally sliced over the top edge between the side that the inscription is supposed to be on and accidentally continued to scratch onto the top side of the slab where it broke apart. This accidental scratch extending onto the top side of the slab would have been impossible to make if the slab had been in one piece when the inscription was originally created.
You can see the slice mark onto the top side of the slab in the book cover photo that Lemche mentioned:
https://i0.wp.com/vridar.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/moore-kelle.jpg?ssl=1
The case of the upper line is only among more. Full treatment in Gmirkin’s article about tool slippages in SJOT in 2004. The printing of the fotos there is awful, and I am not sure that I still have the electronic originals. Gmirkin’ family might have the photos. Maybe Greg Doudna who is in touch with them might help.
Back in the nineteens at Tell Jizrael, our technician, Alan Morehead, told us that it would have been a simple matter to state the facgts by a petrochemical test. If the inscription was new the stone will sweet differently in the inscription from the rest of the stone. It would take five minutes. But as a holy stone, this will never happen.
Finally, in my Amman lecture from 2001 — mentioned above — I concluded after having rested my case: None of the arguments brought forward here will be able to convince those who believes in the authenticity of the inscription.
I recall Finkelstein saying in one of his booksthat where there is no clear archaeological evidence to the contrary, he assumes veracity of the biblical narrative. I prefer Neil’s approach above, better to live with the unknown, and accept the uncertainty. F. does to his credit, accept the new evidence of Yonaton Adler and Gad Barnea, per his comments on a recent video of a speech he gave.
Do you have a link to that video?
So George Athas allegedly thinks the evidence of the mem tail being sliced onto the top of the slab isn’t anything to be concerned about.
Then how do we explain the fact that the cover photo of his book discussing the topic deliberately cuts off the first line at the top of the slab containing the mem?
https://search.worldcat.org/title/276866943
Maybe someone is slightly more bothered by this cut mark than he would like to admit.
Given that Lemche pointed out that the mem in the top line was questionable, I was looking at all of the mems in the inscription. It seems rather bizarre that the mems are written using drastically different angling. This is very easy to see in the derived image of the inscription:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_stele#/media/File:Tel_dan_inscription.png
On fragment B1, in the bottom row, the mem is tilted at an angle such as to make it align perfectly with the cut edge of the slab. The other mems on fragment B1 (2nd line from bottom and 2nd line from top) are almost completely vertical while the one at the bottom is significantly more slanted. Whereas the mems on the main Fragment A are considerably more horizontal, perhaps with the exception of the one at the beginning of the 6th line from the bottom. The one mem on fragment B2 in the second line from the bottom is extremely horizontal by comparison to the ones on fragment B1.
It’s hard to imagine that the same carver as the carver of Fragment A also carved the mems on Fragment B1, so it seems questionable whether these are supposed to go together.
I wonder if I’m being overly skeptical, but if you look at some images of the slab, the mem in the top row is much clearer than if you look at other high quality images taken later.
Here’s the image Lemche pointed out as showing the slice over the top:
https://i0.wp.com/vridar.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/moore-kelle.jpg?ssl=1
Here’s a picture from 1993 when the discovery was originally published showing the mem pretty clearly:
https://berlinarchaeology.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/biran-naveh-1993.pdf
Yet if you look at images from today, like this extremely high quality 3d model, the mem appears to have become drastically less prominent:
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/tel-dan-stele-db96b2ea84084a57bc05e523facbe41c
The mem in the top row is also drastically less prominent in the high quality image that was uploaded as the main image of it on Wikipedia:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/JRSLM_300116_Tel_Dan_Stele_01.jpg
Another interesting point worth noting, if you just look at the top side of the slab in the photo on the book cover that Gmirkin point out, the top side of the slab appears to be highly rough and jagged. It wouldn’t feel good to run your hand across it:
https://i0.wp.com/vridar.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/moore-kelle.jpg?ssl=1
But if you look at the modern image posted prominently on Wikipedia, the top part looks shockingly smooth by comparison:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/JRSLM_300116_Tel_Dan_Stele_01.jpg
Not sure if I’m on to something, but this seems strange.
The 3d model also makes the top look a lot smoother:
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/tel-dan-stele-db96b2ea84084a57bc05e523facbe41c
The top looks very unsmooth in the original photograph from the time of the discovery:
https://berlinarchaeology.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/biran-naveh-1993.pdf
This is starting to remind me of JFK assassination theories.
We would need a report by a paleographer who had carefully inspected the stele first hand
to be able to say anything definite. You can’t draw conclusions about authenticity based on web photos.
Did Gmirkin ever say he doubted the authenticity, or even that he agreed with Lemche’s observations?
I’m with Chrissy, I don’t don’t see what Lemche is seeing here.
Look at the L in the word BIBLICAL at the top of the picture. Then go straight down. There is an upward cut on the slab that crosses from the front side with the inscription onto the top side that was presumably the interior of the original slab when the inscription was allegedly made.
https://i0.wp.com/vridar.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/moore-kelle.jpg?ssl=1
Gmirkin told the story of the taking of the photo in an interview on YouTube once. Gmirkin apparently went through at least some small amount of trouble to take the photo, and of all the things he could have been doing on his short once in a lifetime trip to Israel, the fact that he bothered to go out of his way to take the photo and to ensure that it was passed along to Lemche and his associates suggests he must have been at least suspicious.
I don’t recall very clearly whether Gmirkin ever made any direct statement about his official position. Google AI is telling me he wrote in a book one time that he was assuming that the Stele was legitimate for the sake of whatever he was arguing. But as it’s been pointed out, whether the Stele is a fake or not, it doesn’t really say much about the veracity or historical reliability of the Biblical narrative which was obviously written long after the fact.
I don’t know what exactly to make of this slicing over the top. I also noted while looking at the 3d model that on the upper left side of the slab of fragment A there were other cases where it looks like breaks in the rock aligned with the letters to some degree and one could imagine that the rock might be more likely to accidentally break where there is an actual inscription already present at random. And the oddities I pointed out could just be due to lighting differences.
It doesn’t really surprise me one way or the other. The stories of David in the Bible appear to be completely fictional, whether or not he was a real person or whether “bytdwd” means “house of the beloved” or “house of king David”. One thing David was not, was the father of a king who ruled from Egypt to the Euphrates, whose sons ruled the entire land of Israel. Whatever historical kings there may be mentioned in 1-2 Kings, the list doesn’t include Solomon, Jeroboam, or Rehoboam.
Actually, I think what’s going on that causes this image to show the slice over the top super clearly:
https://i0.wp.com/vridar.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/moore-kelle.jpg?ssl=1
While this image extremely obscures the mem that slices over the top:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/JRSLM_300116_Tel_Dan_Stele_01.jpg
Is that the light in the second picture has been placed in pretty much the exact optimal spot to severely obscure the slice that goes over the top. In the first image the lighting source for the image is above the slab and more off to the left. In the second image, the lighting source is above and to the right, probably at the exact angle so that there is a straight line directly from the lighting source down the problematic slice to its bottom. Hence it’s nearly impossible to notice the slice that goes over the top and that exact slice mark is severely obscured.
Who knows what to make of this, but it does make one wonder if it’s deliberate.
Fred Cryer planned to write a thesis seeing the David story in Samuel as a rewriting of the Alexander novel. Fred had many plans and all to few materialized.
But a point to be made is the way of characterizing the acting persons. And to find something similar you do not go the ANE texts. You go to theatre and see Attic dramas from the 5th century. It you want more, may I recommend Lisa Maria Haasbroek in SJOT 2022 and 2024!
How does such a story as the one about biblical Israel settle in people’s mind? No social media, few, very few could read and write. Again go to theatre. Hardly any Hellenistic town didn’t have its own theatre. Large enough to house the whole male population. Alternative: Synagogues … but there were hardly any before the Hellenistic Period, or…?
https://independentresearcher.academia.edu/LisaHaasbroek
The David story echoes several key episodes in Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Alexander novel. The one I find the most striking is Alexander’s treatment of the defeated Darius:
Compare David’s lament over the death of Saul with Alexander’s reaction to his enemy Darius’s death:
Again, we know how an opportunist came to David expecting a reward for boasting that he killed Saul, which makes the following somewhat striking:
Other little details pop up throughout — Alexander/David dismissed on superficial appearance as being too small/unsoldierly (though this is not the image presented in the novel’s account of Alexander’s boyhood)… the pursuit of one king after the other as they continually find new encampments…. Alexander/David bear the image of lawless brigands . . . . having to make a quick escape from an enemy court when recognized . . . . a skilled musician moves a king to ease his wrath by skillfully playing his flute. . . . the theme of the greater king giving way to the lesser, with “the lesser” being superior in every battle. . . .
(Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels)
You cannot make a probative argument based on a web reproduction of a book cover.
Can we at least see the photo Gmirkin took that started all this?
Go to SJOT 2004 (I think), to Gmirkin’s article there on tool slippage.
He was also the one who set this discussion going by his fotos from the museum back in 1995.
So, yes, he definitely took the inscription to be a fake.
Gmirkin’s article is in SJOT 16.2 (2002).
He suspects forgery, but withholds judgement, and says he is willing to defer to epigraphists’ opinion.
The article includes some very blurry images, maybe the ones discussed above? They are far from forensically adequate. He even admits,
“After considerable study, the author concluded that one of the possible stylus slips is actually an optical illusion.”
He concludes,
“…further scientific examination should serve to remove the inevitable subjective element in the visual observations this article reports. Hopefully, such examination will serve to resolve lingering
questions regarding the authenticity of the Tel Dan Inscription.”
About half a dozen epigraphers have examined the stele. None suspect forgery. I suppose that’s why Gmirkin stopped commenting on the matter.
The most recent epigrapher to publish about it seems to be Michael Langlois.
https://michaellanglois.org/medias/langlois-2024-tel-dan-inscription-iej-74-2.pdf
He includes some high-res images.
Langlois leaves open the possibility of forgery, but does not seem troubled by the existing evidence.